about our
simple board. Rosalind was sooner at home in this noble company than
I: she had far less to learn; but at last I grew into a familiarity
with my neighbours which was all the sweeter to me because it
registered a change in myself long hoped for, often despaired of, at
last accomplished. To be at one with Nature was a joy which made life
seem rich beyond all earlier thought; but when to this there was added
the fellowship of spirits as true and great as Nature herself, the wine
of life overflowed the exquisite cup into which an invisible hand
poured it. The days passed like a dream as we strayed together through
the woodland paths; sometimes in some deep and shadowy glen silence
laid her finger on our lips, and in a common mood we found ourselves
drawn together without speech. Often at night, when the magic of the
moon has woven all manner of enchantments about us, we have lingered
hour after hour under that supreme spell which is felt only when soul
speaks with soul.

X

. . . there's no clock in the forest.

There were a great many days in Arden when we did absolutely nothing;
we awoke without plans; we fell asleep without memories. This was
especially true of the earlier part of our stay in the Forest; the
stage of intense enjoyment of new-found freedom and repose. There was
a kind of rapture in the possession of our days that was new to us; a
sense of ownership of time of which we had never so much as dreamed
when we lived by the clock. Those tiny ornamental hands on the
delicately painted dial were our taskmasters, disguised under forms so
dainty and fragile that, while we felt their tyranny, we never so much
as suspected their share in our servitude. Silent themselves, they
issued their commands in tones we dared not disregard; fashioned so
cunningly, they ruled us as with iron sceptres; moving within so small
a circle, they sent us hither and yon on every imaginable service.
They severed eternity into minute fragments, and dealt it out to us
minute by minute like a cordial, given drop by drop to the dying; they
marked with relentless exactness the brief periods of our leisure and
indicated the hours of our toil. We could not escape from their
vigilant and inexorable surveillance; day and night they kept silent
record beside us, measuring out the golden light of summer in their
tiny balances, and doling out the pittance of winter sunshine with
niggardly reluctance. They hastened to th